


'cause i'm a little unsteady

by pyladic



Series: prompts [3]
Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Bad Parenting, Other, Roughhousing, Touch-Starved, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 21:23:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17190581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyladic/pseuds/pyladic
Summary: honestly this is shit and i'm not sorry





	'cause i'm a little unsteady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onetrueobligation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetrueobligation/gifts).



It starts when they're young men, when he and Pierre and Anatole Kuragin are somehow, impossibly, good friends. It's nighttime, in Anatole's apartment in Moscow, and Fedya and Pierre are already two or three drinks ahead of him. They're quickly approaching the dangerously good-natured stage of drunkenness, when Pierre comes out of his shell a little, and Fedya stops pretending to hate everyone and everything and scales it down to just most people and things.

They're also down to the last few sips of vodka. He's quickly foreseeing that becoming a problem, since Pierre is holding the bottle and doesn't seem inclined to let go of it any time soon.

Fedya reaches out for it, wiggling his fingers, but Pierre pulls it away, his mouth twitching upwards. Fedya makes another grab, with much the same results, and before either of them really knows how it happens, they're tussling playfully on the floor, the bottle forgotten on the end table. Pierre laughs, a big, booming sound that reverberates in his broad chest, and as Fedya digs his fingertips into the meat of his arm, he thinks he hasn't heard that sound come out of him in a while.

"Get off of me, you bastard!" Pierre's voice is breathless with laugher, and Fedya grins down at him, keeping him pinned firmly to the floor as he reaches over for the bottle. He downs the rest of the bottle in one swig and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, then turns to look at Anatole, grinning, inviting him to share in the joke.

Anatole is frozen on the sofa, a tight, strained smile on his lips, every muscle tensed, as if he's poised to run. 

It's not like they haven't done this before. They're boys. They play and they fight and more often than not, the two are inextricably intertwined. It's just that he hadn't realized until now that Anatole never really takes part. Where he and Pierre will get rough with each other, will tease, Anatole always keeps himself a foot or two apart, precise, pristine, and fragile as glass.

***

"Do you really intend to tell me your mother is going to loan you some money?" Fedya folds his arms and leans back against the slick marble of one of the columns lining the foyer. It's the first time he's been to the Kuragin estate properly, but why should he bother trying to impress these people?

Anatole's lips pinch, and his gaze narrows on the smudges Fedya is leaving on the floor. "Did you bother to wipe your shoes?"

Fedya raises his eyebrows. "I just think it's funny that I've never heard about her. Why am I here, anyway?"

He mutters something under his breath that sounds a lot like "moral support," and Fedya's eyebrows shoot up further.

"Did you tell anyone we were here?" It's just been a suspiciously long time to be standing out here unattended in someone else's house. That's all he really has to say about it. And it's terribly grand. He'd known Anatole's parents are quite wealthy, but it's another thing entirely to be faced with it like this.

A door opens down the hall, and a woman hurries towards them. She's young, younger than he'd expected for a woman with three nearly grown children. Princess Kuragina smooths back a stray tendril of dark red hair, and although Fedya is several inches taller than her, manages to look down her curved nose at him. It would be impressive, except that he's not quite sure he likes the way Anatole tenses up the second she gets close.

"Toto," she says, and for all that she's using the most familiar nickname he's heard anyone use for Anatole, her voice is cold. "I didn't know you were bringing a friend."

Anatole looks down at his feet and mumbles something unintelligible, so Fedya takes it upon himself to introduce himself. "Fyodor Dolokhov," he says, and bows low to kiss her hand. She gives it to him with an icy expression. "Your Highness."

On any other woman he's met, that level of charm would at least put a crack in her guard. On Princess Kuragina, it just seems to make her freeze over.

She pulls her hand away and looks back at Anatole, who seem to have shrunk into himself. He's scuffing his toe on the marble floor, head low. There's a long, terribly awkward silence where Fedya and Princess Kuragina both wait for him to say something.

"Toto?" she prompts. She's smiling, but there's no affection in it at all. "What is it that you want?"

Fedya's starting to think that agreeing to come along was a bad idea.

Finally, Anatole looks up. "I needed some money, Maman."

Her laugh could break glass, for all that it's delicate and tinkling and completely controlled. "Toto, really? Is that what this is? As if you don't have enough already." Already, she's turning away to go.

Anatole's eyes go wide, and he reaches out for her sleeve. "No, Maman, wait, please -" he starts, but cuts himself short at the way she catches his wrist, grip tightening just enough that Anatole sucks in a breath.

Fedya freezes. What else can he do?

Princess Kuragina looks down at their hands and laughs again, like she's not quite sure how they got quite like that. "Run along, now, darling," she says, and releases him. "Go and do something useful with yourself." And just like that, she's gone.

Anatole is trembling, staring down at his hand, where Fedya can just make out red marks where her fingers had dug into his wrist. 

Fedya hesitates. "Anatole," he says softly, stomach twisting uncomfortably, and reaches out to take his hand. His fingers brush Anatole's skin, but before he can get any further, Anatole jerks his hand away and shoves it in his pocket, hunching low on his way out the door as if the touch burns.

***

"Anatole, this is idiotic, even for you. Come on." Fedya shoves his hands into his pockets and hovers in the doorway, looking out onto the balcony, where Anatole is standing, in only his shirtsleeves, arms wrapped around himself, shivering, snow swirling around him. It's the middle of January in one of the worst blizzards Moscow has ever seen, and he's standing outside and sulking like a child, because Fedya won't go along with his monumentally idiotic elopement plan.

Anatole shakes his head. "I'm fine."

Stupid boy. Would it have been too much to find a coat before running off to sulk?

Fedya bites at his lips. "Just stay there for a minute, alright?" Elena will surely kill him if he lets her brother freeze to death, and as much as Anatole infuriates him, he won't let him die. Not today, anyway. Possibly tomorrow.

He goes to fetch his coat, and steps out onto the balcony with him. Anatole stiffens at the sound of his footsteps, but doesn't turn. This close, Fedya can see just how much he's shivering.

"Anatole," he says gently. "Please come inside. You'll catch your death out here."

Anatole turns, expression guarded, hurt in his eyes, and Fedya feels a pang of guilt. Perhaps he's been a little harsh with him. Perhaps he's forgetting just how much of a boy Anatole really is, under all that swagger.

"Fine," Anatole says, and Fedya follows him back through the door, feeling at the same time like an overbearing parent, and also completely useless. If he were better, he wouldn't have let things get this far to begin with.

He's still shivering, and faintly, Fedya realizes that he has no idea what he's meant to do about that. Carefully, hesitantly, he reaches out to put his hand on Anatole's shoulder. He's ice cold, but more than that, the touch seems to have sent a shock through him, because he's just standing there and staring. Anatole takes a shaky breath.

"You're freezing," Fedya says, because it seems like the thing to say, and squeezes his shoulder gently. He takes a step closer, meaning to take Anatole to the sofa, to find him a blanket or stoke the fire or something, but before he can get that far, Anatole's face screws up like he's about to cry and suddenly, he's folding himself into Fedya's arms like they're his only home.

"What-" Fedya starts to say, but his arms come up of their own volition to wrap around him and Anatole makes a tiny contented sound and presses his face against Fedya's shoulder and then there's really nothing to be done but keep on holding him.

He's freezing. That's all. They need to get Anatole warm. 

And if he's going to be thorough about it, if he's going to take Anatole back to bed and try to tuck him in, but Anatole won't let go, and if he has to climb under the covers with him to get him to stay put, and if Anatole falls asleep right there pressed against his chest, warm and languid and curled in on himself like a child, and if Fedya stays there through the night, that's no one's business but his own.

And if in the morning they both pretend it never happened, well, that's just the way the story goes.

**Author's Note:**

> honestly this is shit and i'm not sorry


End file.
